


Flat Tire

by strangestorys



Series: Spacedogs Ficlets [3]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Fluff, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M, Marshmallows, Mystery, Nigel is a big baby, Scooby Doo References, Spacedogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-10-17 12:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangestorys/pseuds/strangestorys
Summary: Adam and Nigel get a flat tire on the way home from a camping trip and are forced to spend the night in a spooky abandoned mansion. Adam is up and ready to solve mysteries, and Nigel is, of course, a big hungry baby who needs his hand held the whole time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laura3C273](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura3C273/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for a prompt from Laura3C273, who requested: _would LOVE to have a story that has a scary element. You know how Nigel can be a chicken sometimes when it comes to spooky stuff. I am a huge werewolf fan. Love the Blood & Chocolate/Aiden stories too with Nigel._
> 
> I had SO MUCH FUN with this story, and I really hope you enjoy it! Horror is one of my favorites, and I especially love the haunted house genre, so this story ended up going that direction. It this was an awesome chance to throw all my favorite tropes at the wall (including the Maine setting, which I couldn't pass up as a big Stephen King fan :3).

“Are you sure we don’t have any snacks left? I’m getting hungry.”

“Ummm, try the box of graham crackers.”

Nigel kept his left hand on the wheel and dug his right one blindly into the shopping bag behind Adam’s seat, eventually finding something cardboardy and rectangular enough to probably be the graham cracker box. He grabbed it and put it in his lap, returning both hands to the wheel at Adam’s pointed glare.

They were headed home from an autumn camping trip Nigel had planned for them in the dark sky country of central Maine, a place Adam had recounted fond memories of camping with his family as a child. Nigel had timed the trip to the Orionid meteor shower, an event he’d found marked in neat pencil in Adam’s planner while snooping for vacation ideas.

Adam, it turned out, was as delighted to see the meteor shower as he was un-delighted that Nigel had poked around in his personal belongings, and kicked Nigel out of his room for a good week after he found out. For his part, Nigel felt that his growing acquaintance with their couch cushions was all worth it when they came out here and he could see the scattered pinpricks of light reflected back in Adam’s wide hazel eyes.

And it really was gorgeous out here, far away from civilization. The stars were violent swarms of brightness in the velvet sky above, grouped and clumped where they’d fallen eons ago. The air was a dense mixture of sharp pine and the quick, heavy decay of autumn. Soon the whole place would fill with the spearmint of winter, blanketed in white snow and peppered with rabbit and wolf tracks.

They’d spent a long weekend in a rented cabin - neither of them was too fond of the idea of a tent - going on long walks in the woods, fucking long and sweet on the old, squeaky bed, and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire (Adam had had to explain the concept of s’mores to Nigel, who took to them as readily as he’d taken to his first Glock at the tender age of twelve.).

Now, about an hour into their drive back to the city, Nigel dug his hand into the box of graham crackers and pouted when he discovered it was empty.

“Babe, do they sell this stuff at the bodega on 10th?”

“Probably, but you’re not setting a fire in the apartment to cook s’mores.”

“I never said anything about a fire. Can’t we use a micro–” _THUNK_

The loud noise startled Nigel out of his plans for inner-city toasted marshmallows, and he quickly shoved his foot down on the brakes and swerved the car over to the shoulder.

“SHIT.”

“Nigel–”

“What the fuck was that?? Did we hit something? Are you ok, love??”

“I’m… I’m fine, Nigel. Can you take your arm out of my space?”

Nigel looked over, realizing that he’d instinctively caged Adam in with his arm in his panic. He sheepishly put it down, but didn’t let up his concern.

“Are you sure you’re ok? Can you move all your toes?”

“I think so? One, two, three… seven… ten. Yeah, all of them.”

“Fingers?”

“Yep.”

Nigel breathed out hard. He didn’t care as much about his own toes; he knew he could at least live without the pinkies. There was a guy back in the mob who had only had three on each foot, and used to let new recruits take bets on how he’d lost them.

“Okay, bird. Let me know if that changes. Or if anything gets blurry, okay?”

“Nigel, I’m fine. I know the symptoms of concussion, and I didn’t even hit my head. We didn’t even hit anything with the car, all you did was slow down quickly.”

Nigel looked between Adam’s eyes, left, right, left, right. Adam followed his gaze instantly, and they ping-ponged back and forth for a minute. Nigel stilled his gaze and Adam followed reflexively.

“Let me know.”

“Okay, okay. I will.” Adam finally broke his eye contact, gazing outside his window at the purpling twilight and fiddling with the lock on the door.

Nigel rested his hand in his chin against the door and looked at the silent highway through the windshield. “Wait, what do you mean we didn’t hit anything with the car?”

“We would have seen anything big enough to make that thump, Nigel. You just have a flat tire, it was bound to happen at some point. We really need to stop borrowing cars from your dealer buddies.”

Nigel covered his face with his hand. “Noted. If we ever get back to the city, I’ll find us a new car rental place.”

“There’s a jack and a donut in the trunk, we’ll be fine.”

“Excuse me?” He looked over at Adam, who had opened the glovebox and was searching around in it.

“You do know how to change a tire, right?” Adam asked absentmindedly, rooting around old foldup maps and pairs of sunglasses missing one arm or the other.

“…”

“…Nigel?” He finally looked up questioningly.

“Why the fuck would I know how to change a tire?”

“Because… you’re an adult?” He went back to rooting around in the glovebox, eyes finally lighting up as his fingers hit what he was looking for.

“You’re on thin ice here, babe.”

“Why are you driving us out in the country if you don’t know how to change a tire? Do you at least know what to do with this?” He held up the contraption he’d found in the glovebox, a thin, round metal tube with a piece of plastic sticking out the end. Nigel stared at it like it might jump out an bite him. “It’s a pressure gauge, Nigel. We can at least check the tires to see if they’re drivable.”

“Look, if you want someone to break down, clean, and reassemble an assault rifle in under a minute, I’m your man, but changing tires isn’t something I had to do very often in the underground heroin industry. Why don’t _you_ know how to change a tire? You’re an adult too, bird.”

“I grew up in Manhattan,” Adam responded, with no hint of irony.

Nigel dropped his eyebrows and chuckled. “Touché… Can you at least work the pressure thing?”

“I think so? I saw my dad do it once.”

“Well, let’s get to it then.” Nigel unclicked his door and stepped out onto the highway, gravel crunching under his feet. He heard the other door’s click and Adam’s softer footsteps a second later.

Both of them came around to the back right tire at the same time, and simultaneously sighed when they saw it was completely flat. It would have been _comically_ flat if this were a kids’ mystery cartoon show, but it wasn’t, and its flatness just sat there taunting them with its ineffectuality.

“I… don’t think this will tell us anything we can’t already see.” Adam gestured with the pressure gauge.

Nigel took it delicately out of his hand and promptly hurled it into the dense woods. “Nope.”

Adam raised his eyebrows at him. “Feel better?”

Not really. “A little.”

So here they were. Somewhere in the middle of the Maine woods, down one tire and one pressure gauge, completely out of snacks, and night setting on rapidly.

“Well… can we call someone?” Adam ventured.

Nigel pulled his phone out of his pocket. No service. Of course.

“No luck.”

“We might have to walk for it. A sign back there said Millinocket is in five miles or so. Which means a little less than five miles, given that I saw the sign back there.”

Nigel rested his elbows against the roof of the car and rubbed at his face. Of course they’d have to walk for it. The perfect ending to their idyllic romantic weekend.

“Well, at least we brought good hiking shoes. Come on, bird. Maybe they’ll have a diner with some pie in town.”

“I don’t know that pie is our main priority right now, Nigel.”

“Speak for yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for updates! I actually have most of this one written (SHOCKING), so it should all be up pretty soon!
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr and Twitter!
> 
> [strangestorys.tumblr.com](http://strangestorys.tumblr.com)
> 
> [@strange_storys](http://twitter.com/strange_storys)


	2. Chapter 2

And so they set off to town, in search of someone who could help them with pie, a new tire, or both.

The first mile was easy: flat and scenic, the sun setting to their right in warm pinks and maroons behind the distant mountains. It was almost nice, the crisp air tinged with the smell of pine, the sound of birds singing their twilight calls, the perfect view of Adam’s ass filling Nigel’s field of vision…

“It’s heavy.”

Nigel blinked at the sudden break in the silence. “It’s… pardon?”

“The air, it feels heavy. The way it does before it rains.”

Nigel snorted. “It’s not going to rain.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s not.”

Adam had that quizzical look on his face, like he didn’t understand why Nigel would disagree with him when all the _evidence_ was on his side. “There’s always a chance it might.”

“But it’s not.”

“Ok. I still think it could.”

“Ok, bird. I’ll let you think that. But it still won’t.”

Nigel had always been one to focus on the version of events he’d rather see than the version that fit the _evidence_. This was a trait Adam referred to as “denial,” but Nigel preferred to call “optimism.” Of course, Nigel knew perfectly well that Adam was probably right. Adam was _always_ fucking right, especially where the sky was involved.

But for now, Nigel was still technically right, and he would remain so for the next twenty steps, after which it immediately started raining. Hard.

Fuck.

“Don’t you dare fucking say anything.”

“I didn’t,” Adam insisted, though his eyes were lit up like Christmas trees. Smug psychic bastard.

“I can see you thinking it.”

Even through his shame, Nigel came up beside Adam and pulled his coat over both of their heads to keep them dry. Adam huddled in a little closer, and Nigel felt him shivering in the wet chill. The sun had just dipped below the horizon, and the purple of the sky was getting deeper and deeper, rocketing swiftly towards inky black.

“We need to get inside, babe.”

“Well, it’s still two and a half miles to town that way, and a mile and a half to our car that way,” Adam gestured behind them as well as he could with his hands clenched in the side of Nigel’s loose sweater.

“That’s not close enough.”

It was quickly devolving from one of the best weekends they’d had to one of the worst. Adam was cranky and wet, Nigel was hungry and wet, and both of them were tired and wet.

“Well… maybe we can…” Adam let go of Nigel’s side, reached into his own coat pocket, and rustled around for a second. “…hold on, stop walking.”

Nigel did, looking at him curiously. Now they were standing still in the rain, drops falling heavily off the hem of his jacket in front of their faces.

A melange of tinkling and jangling noises came from Adam’s coat pocket, which sounded like he had a janitorial department’s worth of keys in there. Nigel knew better than to mess with Adam’s pockets; they were like perfectly organized black holes that only Adam understood. He was sure Adam had some secret Dewey decimal system for the interiors of his jackets, jeans, duffel bags, backpacks, and drawers.

Finally, just as a bead of water was making its way down Nigel’s nose, Adam unceremoniously pulled a little metal tube out of his pocket. He clicked the end of it, and the deserted street in front of them was flooded with light for what seemed like miles.

“Shit, I didn’t know you were a wizard, babe.”

“It’s just a pocket Maglite, Nigel. My dad gave it to me for emergencies, but I never really use it because I’m always in the city and it’s bright at night there anyways.”

“Huh. How’s it going to get us to town?”

Adam gave him a confused look. “It’s not,” he clarified helpfully, swinging the beam of light around them to get a bearing on their surroundings.

“So why are we…” Nigel trailed off when Adam’s light stopped moving, aimed at a spot directly to their left.

The round circle of light perfectly illuminated a stately building rising out of the gloom, and, just as Nigel adjusted his eyes to see it, a huge crack of lightning lit up the sky, revealing an enormous decrepit mansion, its ornate railings and balustrades shuttered in rotting plywood.

“SHIT.”

“We can shelter in there until the storm passes.”

“Where did that thing come from???”

“I’m assuming someone built it at some point.”

“Very funny.”

“Well, that’s how it got there.”

“I know that.” Nigel moved in tighter to press against Adam’s side again. “I don’t know if this place is safe, bird. It looks… spooky.”

“There’s probably no one there, Nigel. And it’s better than being cold and wet out here.”

“You say that now… wait until there’s an Indian burial ground curse on this place.”

“A what? Nigel, that’s an offensive trope and you know it.”

“Yeah but it’s gotta be a trope for a _reason_ , right?”

“The reason is lazy, racist horror writers.”

“Fine. But I’m still not ruling out a family of inbred cannibals living in the attic.”

“The attic doesn’t look structurally sound enough for that, Nigel.”

“We’re going in there whether I want to or not, aren’t we?”

“Yep.”

“Dammit. Then you’re at least going to hold my hand. For your own sake, of course.”

“But I’m not… oooooohhhh. Right.” Adam broke out into a giggle, which he poorly attempted to stifle at the scowl on Nigel’s face. “Okay, sure, Nigel. I’ll hold your hand.”

Nigel relaxed his face, trying to appear confident on the outside. For Adam’s sake, of course. And possibly for his own dignity’s sake. “Feel free to give it a squeeze if you need.”

Adam gave his hand a firm squeeze. “Like that?”

“Just like that.” Nigel squeezed back.

“Do you want me to keep it squeezed tight like that?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Ok. Does that feel better, Nigel?”

“It feels perfect.” They shared a small smile.

Suddenly, an owl hooted from the blackness of the trees just behind them, and Nigel just about jumped a good foot out of his own skin.

“Ow, ow, ow, not that tight, Nigel!”

“Agh! Sorry, bird.” Nigel tried his best to recoup and slow his heart rate again, returning his hold to a more gentle squeeze. “Better?”

“Much. Don’t worry, we’ll be okay out here,” Adam rubbed his thumb softly across the back of Nigel’s knuckles, causing him to relax further.

“Okay, love. I know we will. I’ll make sure we are.”

“That’s… Okay, Nigel. Thank you.” He smiled softly and took a step onto the stone path leading up to the house.

Adam kept his promise and kept his hand steadily nestled around Nigel’s for the whole walk. They both knew it wasn’t for Adam’s sake, but Nigel appreciated his silence on the matter all the same.

The stone walkway was about a hundred yards long, and slippery, with vines and moss growing up through the cracks and brushing against their boots. Along the way, Adam’s flashlight passed over rough patches of brambles, several absurdly large spiders, and a lichened-over birdbath filled with its own pond ecosystem. Atop the birdbath was a concrete statuary of an angel, its head cloven in two on the diagonal, the left portion sitting a few yards away, buried halfway in the mud. Above it all, the house loomed, a ghastly protuberance from its foundation of black, living earth. The whole thing was almost comically creepy, like someone had designed a horror movie and thrown the entire box labelled “Spooky Props” at the set.

Or, it would have been comical, if Nigel hadn’t been so convinced that there was an army of the living dead in the basement, whiling the long centuries away until two unwitting saps came by looking for shelter.

They huddled together over the long walkway, the flimsy roof of Nigel’s coat forcing them to walk much closer than was comfortable, but Nigel wasn’t about to complain about the warm presence pressed against his arm and clasping his hand. Every time Adam slipped a little on one of the mossy stones, Nigel squeezed tighter against his hand to steady him, which helped him feel a _little_ more like the protector than the protectee.

Finally, they reached the porch, and they stood under the awning to regroup.

“Well, do we… knock?”

“I don’t think there’s anyone in here, Nigel.”

Nigel held his fist up to the door anyway, hovering a few inches from the peeling painted wood. “Last chance to turn back, bird.”

“Just open the door.”

Nigel gave a trio of knocks for good measure, perking his ear up to listen inside. He noticed Adam turning his ear towards the door too, now apparently invested in the outcome. But all they heard was the wind whispering through the pine trees and the bass drum pounding of the downpour on the roof above them.

Nigel gave a tentative push to the old wood with his fingertips, and the door swung wide open with a rusty squeal.

“That’s gotta be the noise your soul makes when it leaves your body.”

“Nigel.”

“Ask my Romanian grandmother, she’ll tell you.”

“You know that’s not possible.”

“So you can’t prove it’s _not_ true.”

“That’s… you’re right, I can’t.”

Adam sighed and shone his flashlight into the entryway, which was, despite its age and decrepit state, a grand and imposing space. A dramatic circling staircase made its way from the right side of the foyer up to the second floor, and then wound around to reach a third landing. The floors were all open around the central space, which towered around them, empty and barren, a vacuum of life. Three doorways led off the central entryway: one straight ahead, and others to the left and right.

Adam took a step forward into the space, hand still wound tightly in Nigel’s. His footsteps echoed on the hard tile and reverberated through the balconies.

“This is so cool! We discovered a whole new place!”

“Cool?”

“Yeah! I wonder who was the last person to come here?”

“Cool? We’re about to become possessed by ghosts, and you think this is _cool_?”

“Yeah! It’s like a gothic novel or something.”

“You’re right, it’s really cool that the shapeshifting wolf monster that lives in the back bedroom is about to curse us to roam the woods with him until the end of time.”

“Nigel, you’ve been watching too much _Unsolved Mysteries_.”

“It’s not my fault Netflix autoplays the episodes when they end.”

“It’s your fault that you don’t get up from the couch all night while it autoplays.”

“Hey, did we come here to get warm and dry, or to insult my TV watching habits?”

“Why can’t we do both?”

Adam was impossible, but then, that’s why Nigel loved him. He smiled and followed Adam into the space.

“Which direction first?” Adam asked brightly, seemingly unaffected by their encroaching and certain death by demonic possession.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, we’re here for the foreseeable future. We may as well explore.”

“You sure you don’t want to sit quietly in the entryway and avoid disturbing long-dormant spirits?”

Adam gave him a look that was just like the one he gave when Nigel put the toiler paper roll on the wrong way (which he apparently did 50% of the time, as he still couldn’t tell the difference). “No, I want to look around. You can stay here if you want.”

“Let me rephrase,” Nigel pushed, running his hand down Adam’s back and stopping to squeeze firmly at his ass. “Are you _sure_ you don’t want to do any _other_ kinds of exploring in here?”

Adam yelped, but arched back into his touch. Nigel smirked and moved in to kiss the bend of his neck, biting gently. “I’ve got a few ways we can stay busy until the rain lets up, bird.”

Adam gasped and let his head loll to the side, giving Nigel better access. He buried his fingers in Nigel’s hair, pressing him closer to his neck. There, that was better.

“Ungh… Nigel…”

Much better. Nigel let up just for a moment to reply, “Yes, babe?”

“This is… this is nice, but…”

Nigel nibbled at his earlobe, delighting in the shiver that ran down his back. “But what, babe?”

“…but we do this all the time at home.”

“I know, isn’t it great?”

“You _know_ I think it’s great… but I want to see what cool things we can find in this house.”

Nigel pulled back and sighed in defeat. “I know, babe. If it’ll make you happy, let’s do it.”

“Really? And you’ll come with me?”

“Of course I will. I’m not staying in the foyer by myself, I’m not _insane_.”

“Nigel.”

“And I wouldn’t leave your side anyway, love. My conditions remain the same, though.”

“Hand holding?”

“Hand holding.”

And so, hand-in-hand, they turned to face the three doors leading into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr and Twitter!
> 
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> 
> [@strange_storys](http://twitter.com/strange_storys)


	3. Chapter 3

“It doesn’t smell good in here.”

“Well it probably hasn’t been cleaned in one to ten years.”

“‘One to ten’?” Nigel snorted.

“That was generous, you’re right.” Adam gave a little laugh. “I’ll revise that to ‘ten to twenty.’”

They’d begun their adventure down the leftmost hallway off the foyer (“We’ll take them clockwise,” Adam had said definitively), and were now poking around a dusty, outdated kitchen.

“What are they doing out here in Maine, letting fancy mansions sit dirty for twenty years? This could have been a perfect, um. Moose house. Lobster shack. Whatever it is they use buildings for up here.”

“ _Moose house?_ ”

“Hey, I’m not from around here, babe. We actually _use_ our fancy mansions in Romania.”

“Well, so do we. Unless they’re…”

“…please don’t finish that sentence with ‘haunted.’”

“I was going to say condemned. Haunted isn’t a real thing, Nigel,” Adam said distractedly, most of his attention focused on the china cabinet he was exploring. Nigel glanced over from where he was poking around in a drawer of tarnished silver to see Adam pull out a dusty white plate with delicate flowers painted on it.

“Tell that to that kid. The one who got killed by the ghost.”

“Which kid?” Adam responded absentmindedly, flipping the plate over and running his finger slowly along the back of it.

“You know. The one.”

Adam finally looked up, plate still in his hand. “I… I don’t think I do, Nigel. You’re being too vague again, I need specifics if I’m going to remember a story.”

Nigel slid the silver drawer shut and moved on to inspect a knife block on the counter. “Well you never got to meet him anyway, on account of him being killed by that ghost and all.”

“I don’t think that really happened.”

“Tell that to the kid.” Nigel looked up from the dull carving knife he was inspecting and winked as he closed his hand around the handle obscenely, pumping it up and down the smooth wooden grip.

Adam blushed and pretended to focus on putting his plate back up on the shelf. “Nigel.”

Nigel just smiled back innocently and put the knife back in the block. Next on his side of the kitchen was a tall cupboard. Inside, among the dust bunnies and cobwebs, he found an old canister of salt (full of little white rice grains that were doing nothing to prevent it from caking together after all these years), a can of beans reading “BEST BY 10-25-77,” and a stoneware jar that he opened to find an ominously gyrating nest of spider eggs. He slammed the jar shut, trying to hide the shudder that went through him.

“Ready to move on, bird?”

Adam forlornly shut the oven door he was peering into. “Yeah, I guess so. Not much here. These people obviously had money, that was some very fine china in the cabinet. I wonder why they left it all here?”

“You’re not going to accept ‘chased out by ghosts’ as an answer, are you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Unruly mob with pitchforks and torches?”

“Unlikely.”

“Gambling debt?”

“That’s… an actual possibility. Good one, Nigel.”

“Thanks!” Nigel knew Adam was patronizing him, but he gave a smug smile all the same and took his hand again to lead him into the next room.

As they walked back further into the house, they passed through a narrow butler’s pantry, its shelves lined with serving dishes and wine glasses, all in anticipation of a feast that would never again happen.

Nigel’s stomach growled, and he thought woefully back on that empty graham cracker box. The hot dogs they’d grilled for lunch had lasted all of about an hour, and earlier in their drive, he remembered spending several minutes at a rest stop searching around the back seat for a leftover bag of chips. Adam had reminded him that there _was_ no leftover bag of chips, but maybe there _would have been_ if Nigel hadn’t already _eaten_ them all.

Adam was helpful like that.

Now, ever tactile and thorough, Adam passed his fingers along all the teacups on the bottom row of shelves, making sure to straighten every single one as he went. He had to stop when the shelf abrubtly ended at a cased doorway leading to a huge dining room. _No_ , Nigel amended while Adam stopped fiddling with the teacups and shone his flashlight around the walls, _more like an_ immense _dining room_.

The hardwood table in the center must have seated twenty people, each of whom would have dined on tall-backed chairs upholstered in a now-dusty scarlet damask. The walls were covered in the same damask cloth above the dark wood wainscoting, and as Adam shone his light further up, Nigel realized they were absolutely covered in taxidermy. A bizarre lineup of animal heads stared down at them as Adam’s light passed them one at a time, a menagerie of the dead.

There were bears, antelope, moose (mooses? meese?), deer of all sizes, fiercely tusked hogs, realistically posed waterfowl, sharp-taloned birds of prey, and one _extremely_ unfortunate rhinoceros.

“So, not particularly animal-friendly gamblers, were they?” Nigel chuckled.

Adam was frozen in horror. “How did they… how did they eat _dinner_ under all of this? With all of these animals _staring_ at them?”

“Probably very smugly.”

Adam was right, though. The animals’ eyes seemed to follow them around the room, and Nigel found himself more and more unsettled the longer they stood in there.

A crack of lightning suddenly illuminated the room through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, and the ensuing boom of thunder rattled the crystal in the massive chandelier above the table.

“Let’s get out of here, Nigel.”

“No argument here.”

They headed towards the door at the far side of the room, walking quickly past the long table and avoiding eye contact with any of their new acquaintances.

When they’d made it about halfway through the room, Adam jumped and clamped a hand to his mouth to stifle his shout.

“What, bird???” Nigel asked, gently taking Adam’s hand down from his mouth and pressing his thumb into the palm of it.

“Did you see that? Right there, in the flashlight beam. Something moved through the light.” He pointed at the round beam of light that that illuminated the door ahead of them. Nigel heard a skittering sound that he couldn’t place. He bristled.

“Give me the light,” Nigel whispered, taking it from Adam’s free hand.

He shone it around the doorway and along the floor, passing a stone-hearthed fireplace, an umbrella rack full of intricately carved walking sticks (no doubt made from some long-endangered rare wood), an incredibly lifelike stuffed raccoon, a brass serving cart… wait.

He backed up a little to focus on the taxidermied raccoon. “Babe, was that there earlier?”

“I… I don’t remember seeing that when we came in.”

The light glinted off the animal’s eyes where it stood frozen in an active pose, as though about to run off.

“Huh. Weird.”

Suddenly they both heard a low hissing sound coming from the other side of the room, and the raccoon burst into life, teeth bared, and skittered away towards the door.

Nigel screamed and dropped the flashlight, instinctively hugging Adam tight to his chest for protection.

“SHIT! Where did it go?”

“NIGEL!! Nigel, let go! I need to get the flashlight!”

“Are you insane?? That thing could be rabid, I’m not letting you loose in the room with it!”

“How is it helping if we’re stuck _together_ near a rabid raccoon?!”

“FUCK, I don’t know!! Can you hear it?!?”

The skittering noise seemed to be coming from every corner of the room at once. One second it sounded like it was right next to them, the next second, like it was all the way in the kitchen.

Adam, meanwhile, had wriggled loose of Nigel’s death grip and was picking up the flashlight. He shone it in the direction of the latest noises, just in time to see the animal’s ringed tail bounce across the far wall and disappear up the chimney of the huge stone fireplace.

Nigel felt himself breathing embarrassingly heavily. “Is it… is it gone??” he asked, trying to pitch his voice a little lower and failing miserably.

“Well, it either went out into the rain, or it lives up the flue. At least it’s not in _here_ anymore.”

“Let’s get a door between us and it, I don’t like the idea of that thing coming back down. And let me hold your hand, I don’t want you getting lost.”

“Yeah, I’m ok with that. This room is creepy anyway.” Adam took his hand gently, pressing into it with his own thumb, before leading him to the far door. Nigel went along without protest.

“This _room_ is creepy?”

“Well, yeah. It’s full of dead animals. Well, mostly dead animals.”

“Right you are. Let’s move on, bird,” Nigel said as he followed Adam out the door, practically slamming it behind them in his excitement to get out of there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Tumblr and Twitter!
> 
> [strangestorys.tumblr.com](http://strangestorys.tumblr.com)
> 
> [@strange_storys](http://twitter.com/strange_storys)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major props to my pal [apoptoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apoptoses/pseuds/apoptoses) for her help working out plotting issues with this chapter!!

They turned together to shine the flashlight on the new room, which was, to their relief, much less morbid than the last. But Nigel was still half-convinced there was something sinister going on beyond the lace doilies on the tables and cross-stitch samplers on the walls.

Adam went up to one of the samplers and began to read it aloud:

> _Three things there are_
> 
> _that will never come back_
> 
> _the arrow shot forth_
> 
> _on its destined track_
> 
> _the appointed hour that_
> 
> _could not wait and…_

*CRACK*

“What the fuck was that?” Nigel found himself barking. Oh, it was a tree limb, it was a fucking tree limb against the side of the window, that was all. Of course that was all, and of course Adam was about to -

“What do you mean ‘what was that?’ You know what a tree limb on a window sounds like, Nigel. We have one outside our living room at home.”

Dammit. At this rate, Nigel would _never_ recover his dignity after this trip.

“Yeah, but our living room is in the middle of Greenwich Village, not bumfuck-chainsaw-massacre, Maine. About the worst that could happen in Greenwich Village is accidentally buying the wrong strain of weed.”

“There’s a wrong strain of weed?”

“There is in Greenwich Village.”

Adam sighed, squeezed his fingers to the bridge of his nose as though trying to quell a migraine, then turned away and continued reading his sampler.

> _…the appointed hour that_
> 
> _could not wait and_
> 
> _the helpful word_
> 
> _that was spoken too late_
> 
> _Elijah and Victoria Barnes, November 1, 1850_

“There were twins born here, Nigel. I wonder what happened to them?”

“1850? They’re almost certainly not around any more. In a physical sense, at least.”

Adam ignored this last comment, though Nigel saw the intense struggle Adam was going through to keep his eyes from rolling into the back of his head. “Realistically though, their grandkids could be around, or their great-grandkids. I wonder if they know about this place?”

“Maybe they wanted to forget.”

“Hmm. Not a very cheerful message on that sampler, either.”

“I might want to forget too, if I was raised in a house like this.” Nigel found himself exploring the fireplace mantle, drawing his finger through the dust as he went. There was a crystal vase full of dry sticks that he assumed must have been flowers once; a mirrored pair of porcelain Fu lions; a tin-boxed Daguerrotype of a man and woman sitting atop an elephant; and something small and furry that looked like a tiny human hand…

“Adam?”

“Huh?” Adam, sitting hunched over on a dusty piano bench, didn’t look up from the small book he was reading.

“Is there a rational explanation for why someone would shrink a human hand, reupholster it, and taxidermy it?”

“Is there… what, Nigel??” Adam finally looked up from the book, looking like he couldn’t decide if he’d rather be perplexed or annoyed.

Nigel held up the little totem between the tips of his forefinger and thumb, shoving it in Adam’s direction.

“That looks like… I don’t think that’s a human hand, Nigel. It looks like a monkey’s paw.”

Still dangling it between two fingers, Nigel brought it a little closer to his face, scrunching up his nose. “Why would they have this?”

“Well, look at their decor. They obviously traveled internationally at some point. This must have been a souvenir.”

“You mean this is like the nineteenth century equivalent of a tacky coffee mug?”

“Sort of, I guess. But more… extraordinary, somehow.”

“Well, it’s certainly not ordinary.”

“It reminds me of that story, the one where the monkey’s paw raises the dead.”

Nigel turned right around on his heel and dropped the paw back on the dusty mantle as fast as he could. “Well, it’s official. I’m done touching things in here.”

“It’s just a story, Nigel.”

“Stories have to come from _somewhere_ , bird. Take my mind off it, tell me what you’re reading. Scooch.” He gestured towards the empty end of the bench.

Adam scooted over and made room for him, giving a blushing little smile when Nigel put a hand on his thigh.

“It’s a diary, Victoria’s from what I can tell. These people, the twins, really did travel a lot. They seemed very interested in foreign artifacts and cultures, and Elijah seems like quite the hunter.”

“What kinds of places did they go?”

“India, the Congo, the Amazon, Indonesia. Whichever European colonies a chunk of cash and a boat could take you to back then.”

“Where do you think their money came from? Where were their parents?”

“I can’t really tell… it seems like the parents must have died early on, and possibly left them money. There are references to lumber and shipping… it sounds like they were barons in the local timber business.”

“That’s all pretty benign, I guess,” Nigel said, a little disappointed at the banality of it. “Except for the parents, just up and dying like that on their kids.”

“Disease was more common back then, even if you were rich. And then there was the Civil War.”

“There’s also blood sacrifice, werewolves roaming the woods, evil monkey’s paws…”

Ignoring him, Adam licked his finger and turned a few pages, scanning them rapidly with his eyes. “Ah!… _fallen to consumption_. Their parents were…” he scanned some more, and turned another page “…sent to a mountain cabin to recover from tuberculosis, and it seems they never recovered. An unfortunate, but unremarkable death.”

“A little too unremarkable.”

“That must have been hard on the twins,” Adam said, quieter, “I know how they feel.”

Nigel’s face softened, and he put a warm arm around Adam’s slim shoulders. “I know you do, little otter. I’ve been joking with you, but that must have been hard for them. And you know what, you’re right. Hearing from the people who lived here, it does make it all a little less creepy. They’re just people who lived a long time ago. People dealing with the same sorts of things we deal with: sickness and love and family.”

“Yes! They cleaned their boots in that entryway, and ate in that dining room, and played this piano for guests. You can almost imagine it, huh?”

“I almost can, bird.” Nigel gave Adam’s shoulder a little squeeze and turned around on the bench.

He slowly picked out a C-scale with his right hand. The notes were out of tune, but clear as a bell in the silent old house.

Nigel then picked out a few bass chords, working them into a recognizable rhythm that had Adam turning around on the bench to join him at the keys. He chanced a glance up and saw Adam’s smile, brilliant as ever, even in this dark old house.

Adam watched his fingers and let him build up his momentum for a minute before joining in with the treble melody, and soon they had a full-fledged, if off-key, rendition of “Heart and Soul” filling the house.

Nigel’s fingers stuttered a little when Adam leaned his head against his shoulder, but he recovered smoothly, pressing into the other man with his own thigh.

They played together for a few minutes, altering keys and speeds with a cohesion that would have seemed rehearsed to anyone listening, and then, just as they’d started, Adam wound down his melody and let Nigel finish them out with a closing string of chords.

“I didn’t know you could play, bird.”

“My dad sent me to lessons when I was a kid. I took well to it, it’s very logical. The rhythm and the sameness of it. You can always recreate whatever sounds you like.”

“Hmm,” Nigel rumbled fondly, Adam’s head still nuzzled into his shoulder.

“What about you, Nigel? Why did you never tell me you knew piano?”

Nigel thought for a second. He’d taken it up as a child, living in his grandmother’s house in the city center. Her piano, like this one, had been old and out of tune, but she taught him how to play: basic chords and arpeggios, short little songs and hymns. On the rare occasions that he thought about that time in his life, he remembered it with a soft fondness. The only other person that had made him feel as loved and welcomed was sitting right next to him, head against his shoulder, sweater sleeves pulled over his hands against the cold.

He answered truthfully, “It just never came up.”

Adam didn’t say anything, just took his hand and squeezed it. Nigel leaned over and kissed him on the top of the head, lingering for a second with his nose in his hair. Alone here, in this giant old house, they were their own family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Twitter and Tumblr! (or, if you'd like, leave a coffee at Ko-fi) <3
> 
>  
> 
> [@strange_storys](http://twitter.com/strange_storys)  
> [strangestorys.tumblr.com](http://strangestorys.tumblr.com)  
> [Buy Me a Coffee](https://ko-fi.com/A25775Y)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, credit goes to the wonderful [apoptoses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apoptoses/pseuds/apoptoses) for looking over this in a shamefully unedited state and helping me talk through it!

“Nigel? Nigel? _Nigel!_ ” The voice seeped through Nigel’s skull and into his groggy brain, stirring him into consciousness.

“Hmm?”

They were laying tangled on the floor, Nigel’s head resting on his wadded up t-shirt, and Adam’s head tucked firmly under chin. When Adam spoke, it ruffled his chest hair, making him rumble softly.

“We should get up.”

Nigel cracked an eye open, expecting to see their Greenwich Village bedroom, and finding instead a massive tiled entryway. His heart raced for a second while he got his bearings, remembering their adventurous evening. After the piano, they’d ended up sitting on the floor in the entryway at some point, both becoming drowsier and drowsier as Adam had read aloud from the diary. Nigel hadn’t heard anything after March of 1888, when the twins had travelled to Panama.

“Unnnhhh… can’t we sleep a little longer?” He gripped Adam tighter to his chest and kissed him on the head, groaning tiredly, then closed his eyes again.

“But…don’t you want to go to town and get our car fixed?” Adam’s fingers were playing absentmindedly with Nigel’s chest hair now, and it was the sort of soft, delicious thing Nigel always loved about weekends. He could imagine what would happen if they were at home on a day like today: long, lazy blowjobs, followed by a big stack of pancakes. Nigel’s belly growled at the thought, and he winced, knowing Adam had heard – or probably _felt_ – the vibrations.

“Shh, there’s nowhere we have to be, town will still be there in a bit. Cuddle with me a little longer.”

“You’re saying you want to stay in this house longer?”

“I want to sleep. With you, preferably.” He punctuated this last bit with a lazy swat to Adam’s ass before hugging him tight to his chest again. Adam yelped and Nigel could almost feel the warmth from his cheeks reddening against his chest.

“We can’t have sex in a stranger’s house, Nigel. Especially not on the floor.”

“Hmmmm,” Nigel chuckled sleepily, “You’re probably right, the ghosts wouldn’t appreciate having to clean their filthy floor after we were done with it.”

Adam laughed at that, his hand pressed flat over Nigel’s heart.

“Let me rephrase: do you want to stay in this house longer, or do you want to go eat breakfast?”

Nigel’s stomach growled loudly again, answering for him.

“That’s what I thought.” Adam extricated himself from Nigel’s arms and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Okay, okay, be that way. But we’re getting straight back in bed when we get home,” Nigel mumbled, bracing himself to sit.

“No arguments here,” Adam said, standing and offering his hand to Nigel, who took it after he pulled his head through his t-shirt. Adam’s own head was a mess, his mop of curls sticking every which way, a light path of stubble just starting to show on his jawline. It was adorable: somehow youthful and masculine at the same time, in that way that Adam had.

While Adam gathered their coats, Nigel stretched and looked back around the foyer, seeing the cobwebbed grandeur for a final time. He had to admit, it wasn’t quite so spooky in the daylight, but the place still gave him the creeps. Now that he was up and dressed, he couldn’t wait to bid it good riddance. The adventure was fun, but it was time to get back to their normal, unhaunted lives in the city.

“Ready, gorgeous?”

Adam led the way to the front door, and just as they walked out onto the porch, a gust of wind came behind them and slammed it shut.

“Well, good riddance to you too.”

“Nigel, the house can’t hear you.”

“Can’t it?”

Adam looked him up and down like he was ready to throw him off the nearest ravine. “…no, Nigel.”

Nigel just smiled and ruffled his hand through Adam’s hair, taking a big breath of the clean morning air, feeling his lungs open up after the night in the dense, dusty house.

The rain had cleared, and the sun was just turning the sky a misty grey-orange. Nigel stretched again as he walked, feeling his bones pop back into place after their night on the hard entryway floor.

“Letting ourselves go to sleep on the tile floor, not our best decision.”

“I’m sure our bodies needed it after the day we had.”

“I’m not sure if I feel better or worse than I did before sleeping.”

“Will you feel better after breakfast?”

“Now you’re talking! Should we turn right?” They were approaching the main road now from the stone path.

Adam looked both ways and nodded his assent. Before they stepped off the path, they both turned around to look at the house. It looked somehow sad in the morning light, alone and forgotten. The broken balustrades, chipped roof tiles, and peeling paint all gave it an air of neglect that wasn’t frightening so much as just sad. The broken angel statue, enough to set Nigel’s teeth on edge in the darkness, was just another piece of junk in the overgrown yard.

“I hope they’re happy, wherever they are,” Adam said. “Or, at least, that their family is.”

“I’m sure they are, babe,” Nigel reassured, giving his shoulder a little pat and then using it to steer him back around to the road. He traveled his hand down Adam’s arm and held his hand tightly, and they walked together back onto the highway.

After a few minutes, Adam used his free hand to pull something out of his pocket and began looking it over as he walked. Nigel recognized it as the diary they’d read in the study.

“Did you _steal_ that?”

“Well… technically, yes. But it wasn’t like anyone was around to claim it.”

Nigel gave an amused chuckle and reached into his own pocket, pulling out a silver fork.

Adam laughed. “Looks like we both got our souvenirs.”

“Speak for yourself, bird, I’m hocking this at the nearest pawn shop as soon as we get back to the city.”

Adam rolled his eyes and kept flipping through the journal as they walked. It was almost unnatural, his ability to avoid obstacles and step over tree roots with his nose in a book like that.

“Did you figure out what happened to the twins?”

“It looks like they just died off… neither of them married, so there was no one to claim the house.”

“At least they had each other as family, but for the line to just end like that, that’s sad. To be forgotten.”

“They’re not forgotten anymore, at least _we_ know about them.”

“True.”

And so they walked. Adam, his nose firmly in the diary, reading out trivia as they went. Nigel was positive that by the end of the trip, they’d both be ready to take big money in the Final Jeopardy! round on _Weird Historic Mainers and their Weird Historic Manors_.

Finally, they saw the small buildings and scattered homes marking the edge of the town, the sun now cresting the pine trees and drying the wet puddles from last night’s rain.

On the main drag, they passed a number of closed shops until they finally found a gas station with the light on. Inside, Adam spoke briefly with the attendant while Nigel had a smoke on the porch. From outside, he could see the man nod sympathetically, take a look out the window, shrug, and switch the sign on the door to SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED.

Nigel stamped his cigarette butt out on the patio with his toe as Adam and the man came out together.

“He’s going to help us with the car, Nigel.”

Nigel reached out his hand to shake the gas station attendant’s, finding his grip solid and firm. He took the chance to size him up, and decided he was trustworthy enough. He was tall and stocky, clean-shaven. He wore blue jeans and flannel, and a pair of worn-in duck boots. It was an honest, parochial look, a look without any ulterior motives. Nigel sometimes wished he didn’t have the instant inclination to categorize people like that, but he knew he couldn’t turn it off; reading people was just a part of him. It made him feel safer, in a way.

He noticed the man doing the same to him, taking in his disheveled appearance, and eyeing between the two of them curiously. He seemed satisfied, or at least unbothered, by what he saw, nodding lightly and saying, “No business this early on a Sunday anyway, let’s get you boys on the road before church lets out. Save you the traffic.”

They both climbed into the backseat of the man’s pickup truck, which smelled like a mix of wet dog and stale coffee, and Adam scrunched up his nose.

“You boys were unlucky, that sure was a bad storm last night.”

“Yes, sir. We did find that big house a couple miles out, so we at least had a roof over our heads.”

The man peered curiously at them in the rearview mirror. “There’s no house on this road.”

Nigel furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, ‘there’s no house on this road’? It’s massive, you can’t miss it.”

“Son, I’ve lived in these parts my whole life, and there’s never been any kind of house out this way. You’d have to be crazy to build out here in the middle of nowhere.” The look he gave them through the mirror brooked absolutely no argument, and Nigel, though confused, was just fine to let it go. Arguments with these boonie-types, no matter how trustworthy, never went anywhere useful, and he just wanted to get home.

Nigel looked over at Adam, who was thoughtfullyfingering the diary he’d stolen. The gears were obviously turning in his head. Uh-oh.

“What about the Barnes family?” Adam asked quietly.

The man’s face went white, his eyes suddenly wide as saucers. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“We found this in the house, it’s the diary of an Elijah Barnes, born in 1850. He lived there with his sister.”

They stopped at a red light, and Adam handed the worn, yellowing book over. The man nervously flipped through it, then read the title page to himself, his mouth moving silently along with the words.

“Huh.” He shrugged his earlier shock off, handing the journal back with a stiff casualness. “Who’s to say you didn’t steal this off someone in town, or make it yourself?”

“Why would we make this up?” Adam asked genuinely, brow furrowed.

The man continued, resolve strengthening by the moment. “I’ve got a cable subscription, I know all about you ghost hunting types. Come out here to little towns and try to scare up spirits. We’re having none of that around here. Millinocket is a town without secrets, am I clear?”

“With all due respect, I’m not sure there’s a such thing as a town without secrets, sir,” Adam replied.

“Well there is, and you’re in it. Best you keep quiet about this whole ‘Barnes House,’ you hear me?”

“But it was…” Adam was looking out the window to their left, trying to find the break in the trees that led up to the house. “…it was just past this mile marker, I remember passing that this morning.”

Nigel remembered it too; he’d almost tripped over it while he was distracted by Adam’s pert ass in front of him.

But beyond the mile marker, there was nothing. No path, no creepy angel statue, no house. Just a wall of trees, as dense as the forest all around.

“What the fuck?” Nigel muttered. “You mean to tell me you’ve got disappearing haunted houses up here, with mysterious, possibly incestuous ghost families living in them? And we _slept_ in one last night?? Christ, I need another cigarette.”

Adam whispered tensely, obviously uncomfortable, “Nigel, that’s not possible. That sort of thing doesn’t happen.”

“It _shouldn’t_ happen. But I think it did.”

The man looked at Nigel through the rear-view mirror. “You boys high or something?”

“Are we high?? I fucking _wish_ we were high, this whole thing would be a lot more bearable.”

“You do whatever you want in New York City, but we don’t take kindly to that sort of thing in our town, you hear?”

“Of course. I’ll keep my drugs and ghost-hunting down in the city where they belong.”

“Nigel…” Adam jabbed him sharply in the side with his elbow.

“It’s a joke, bird. You know I don’t do that stuff anymore.”

“The drugs, or the ghost-hunting?”

“Shush,” Nigel said with a smile, patting Adam’s thigh.

They were silent for the rest of the drive up, and the man, apparently eager to get these two drug-dealing ghost-hunters out of his hair, was able to switch their tire out with no fuss.

“Well, that ought to do it.”

“What do we owe you?” Adam asked, hand in his pocket, ready to pull out a wad of cash.

“Oh, nothing, boys, keep your money. You have a safe drive. And don’t you be spreading rumors about this house you think you found. There’s nothing like that up here.”

“Of course,” Adam responded.

The man turned to leave, clicking open his truck’s door and getting ready to step in.

“Wait, one more thing!” Nigel called after him. “…where can we get a decent slice of pie around here?”

“You headed back south through town? Stop at the Scootin In, let ‘em know I sent ya. Get yourself some good breakfast there too.”

“Ok, sir, will do. Thanks again!”

He gave them a small salute and got into his truck, driving back down the road.

Nigel sat in the driver’s seat and did his seatbelt, looking over at Adam. “Ready?”

“Let’s go home, Nigel.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nigel put on the gas and pulled out onto the highway again, happy to be driving once more.

“It’s bright today, do you remember if I left my sunglasses in the glove box?”

Adam looked up from the diary he was once again reading and shrugged, unlatching the compartment to check. As he did, a snack-sized bag of potato chips fell into his lap, followed by another one, and another.

He held one up to Nigel. “These yours?”

“I knew it! I knew there were more snacks in this car!” Nigel crowed triumphantly, pumping his fist in the air.

“How about I hand you the sunglasses and I’ll hold onto these until you get hungry,” Adam asked, keeping the eye-roll off his face, but not out of his voice

“Works for me,” Nigel winked, slipping the sunglasses onto his face. “Wouldn’t want to ruin my breakfast, after all.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t,” Adam laughed.

—

They made it to breakfast and back home without incident, with the exception of three sacrificial potato chip bags. True to their word, they never told anyone about the house, but Nigel did think of it often, and he often saw Adam go over to the bookshelf where he kept the diary and look at it thoughtfully. He never told Adam, but Nigel kept the silver fork for the rest of his life, nestled at the back of his underwear drawer under the pair of dog-themed boxers Adam had given him as a gift, and which he hadn’t wanted to ruin by wearing.

It was an odd little anomaly of an experience for both of them, unexplainable and unrepeatable, and they felt closer afterwards than they had before, almost like they knew small parts of the other’s hearts that they hadn’t before. Nigel supposed a night of being spooked was a small price to pay for an outcome like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on Twitter and Tumblr! (or, if you'd like, leave a coffee at Ko-fi) <3
> 
> [@strange_storys](http://twitter.com/strange_storys)   
>  [strangestorys.tumblr.com](http://strangestorys.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Buy Me a Coffee](https://ko-fi.com/A25775Y)


End file.
